IX. AGARIAN CHANGES IN EARLY MODERN EUROPE, …€¦ · · 2012-02-02AGARIAN CHANGES IN EARLY MODERN EUROPE, ... Features of English upper-class structures and changes ... •a)

IX. AGARIAN CHANGES IN EARLY MODERN EUROPE, 1500 – 1750

B. ENGLAND: The Enclosure Movements in Tudor-Stuart England, ca. 1520 – ca. 1640

revised 1 February 2012

English Enclosures, 1460 - 1520

• (1) Definition of Enclosure: which we examined last semester ( for period 1460-1520):

• to place lands, previously under communal use (Open Fields), under single management and control (free from external constraints):

• (2) Ultimate purpose of Enclosures: • to extinguish any communal village rights to the

use of the former Open or Common Fields: • to convert communal property rights into

individual, private property rights

English Enclosures, 1460 – 1520 (2)

• (3) Physical Forms of Enclosures: in usual chronological order

• a) Enclosures of Village Commons: • by segregating and leasing portions of the Commons; i.e., pasture

lands, meadows, woodlands, common wastes: used communally by the peasant villagers

• b) Engrossing of the Arable Open Fields (Common Fields): • i) combining several scattered peasant tenancy holdings (in plough

strips) into consolidated leasehold holdings • ii)) Fencing off such new holdings from the Open Fields: i.e.,

dividing up the common-field arable lands into separate tenancy farms (or one capital farm operated by the land owner).

• c) Reclamation of Waste Land: • conversion of waste into new productive farms: net social gains


• (4) Who undertook the Tudor-Stuart enclosures?

• a) manorial landlords: taking advantage of

• i) vacated tenancies (with depopulation): no or few survivors • ii) weak property rights of manorial tenants: • -when landlords had both incentives and ability to dispossess

customary ‘copyholder’ tenants with weak property rights: when ‘lives’ determined duration of those rights

• - as noted, many copyholders, in gaining more freedom lost the inheritance rights associated with the bondage of serfdom:

• - tenancies by copyhold for ‘lives’: maximum of 3 lives = 21 years


• (4) Who undertook the Tudor-Stuart enclosures?

• b) aggressive and prosperous tenants:

• who had already purchased some neighbours’ holdings & had taken over vacated holdings:

• then sought landlord’s agreement to engross their neighbour’s tenancy strips


• (5) The English Midlands:

• Why it was the main focus of the Tudor-Stuart Enclosures and Why Socially Disruptive?

• a) Major region of ‘mixed farming’: equally suitable for arable & pasture: for grain and sheep raising: ‘sheep-corn husbandry’

• b) Region with one of densest populations in England – but so were East Anglia, Home Counties, where enclosures not so disruptive


• (5) The English Midlands: why it was the main regions for enclosures

• c) most highly feudalized and thus manorialized region in England, and

• d) region of classic Open Field communal farming:

• the two went together: if we view Open Field farming as a peasant-determined organization to resist manorial exploitation:

• e) thus much stronger peasant resistance to Enclosures: far more prominent here than elsewhere in England (i.e., in non-manorial areas).


• (6) Demographic & Economic Factors promoting early enclosures: from the 1460s to the 1520s

• a) continued demographic decline shift in land:labour ratios

• i) rising real wages from 1420s – 1440s: higher costs for labour-intensive arable (grain faming)

• ii) pastoral farming more attractive: because it required far less labour (with higher productivity): land-extensive


• b) The Antwerp-based English cloth export boom: 1460s to the 1520s:

• i) sharp rise in cloth exports, chiefly to Antwerp: based on tripod of English woollens, German metals, & finally Portuguese Asian spices.

• ii) Antwerp cloth trade: increased demand for wool demand for pasture lands to raise sheep

• iii) relative price changes favouring sheep raising conversion of both waste and arable lands into pasture lands

• iv) Providing another chief economic incentive for early enclosures

Later Tudor & Stuart Enclosures: ca. 1520 – ca. 1620 (1)

• Chief features of the later Enclosures: from the 1520s to the 1620s

• 1) undertaken both for pastoral (sheep) and arable faming: combined with Convertible Husbandry *next day’s major topic+

• 2) Despite our focus on 1520s – 1620s: • a) enclosures continued to eve of Industrial

Revolution: by which time 70% of England’s total arable lands had been enclosed

• b) remaining 30%: enclosed 1760-1830 (Parliamentary Enclosures)

Later Tudor & Stuart Enclosures: ca. 1520 – ca. 1620 (1)

• 3) Importance of Demography from 1520s: • a) English population more than doubled: from

2.3 million in 1520s 5.6 million c. 1650 • b) growth in London’s population: c. 60,000 in

1500 to c. 450,00 in 1650 • c) English urbanization: key factor promoting Δ

commercialization of agriculture promoting more enclosures

• d) academic problem: how to reconcile models of demographic decline and then demographic growth to explain long phases of enclosures?

Demographic Models for later Tudor Stuart Enclosures

• (1) Demographic Growth Model I: diminishing returns

• a) The Esther Boserup model: discussed 1st semester

• i) that historically & universally: population and consequent diminishing returns provided chief incentive for technological changes in agriculture

• ii) saw some evidence in late 13th century England (and also Low Countries): but no enclosures

• iii) her model had no specific references to England, but her basic principles are seen in the next model

Demographic Models for later Tudor Stuart Enclosures (2)

• b) Joan Thirsk Model: that growth in both human and animal populations, especially in Midlands

• i) forced peasants to expand arable at expense of pasture lands impaired livestock economies

• ii) undernourished livestock inadequacy of manure reduced agricultural productivity

• iii) inadequate supplies of animal goods (milk, butter, cheese, meat, lard, bone, hides, wool, etc). and of grains (arable products)

• iv) surplus supplies of labour: overcrowded lands (disguised unemployment)


• b) Demographic Model II: Thirsk model • v) Enclosures: undertaken in response to

diminishing returns in both arable + pastoral agriculture: to reallocate both labour & livestock

• (1)- replacement of communal agriculture with individual private enterprise necessary to impose required changes to permit productivity growth per unit of land + labour

• (2) i.e., to reallocate labour and land more efficiently [as to be seen in the New Husbandry or Convertible Husbandry, in next lecture]


• c) problems with Thirsk and Boserup models: • i) Thirsk had used similar model to explain

origins of Common or Open Fields: in the 12th & 13th centuries!

• ii) had applied model to explain early Tudor Enclosures on false assumption that population growth had commenced in mid-15th century

• iii) not explain why other English regions did not experience such enclosures: especially East Anglia and the Home Counties

• iv) models can be applied only from the 1520s


• (2) Demographic Growth Model II: Ricardo Theorem on Economic Rent

• a) Role of Population Growth:

• i) That population growth rising grain prices forces into production more distant, less productive, more costly ‘marginal’ lands

• ii) marginal, less profitable lands:

• - differences in land productivity: fertility, efficiency

• - differences in transport costs: distance to the market


• iii) rising prices: to the point where price of wheat = marginal cost of producing last unit of grain produced on last unit of land brought into production (i.e., sufficient to feed population)

• iv) population growth will thus increase economic rents accruing to landowners on the best + better lands:

• because of the wide range of costs, between best (and closest) and worst (most distant lands)

• cost differences: both production and transportation costs (Von Thünen model):

Demographic Models for later Tudor Stuart Enclosures (7): Ricardo

• b) Profit Incentives for landlord enclosures: • i) applies chiefly to manorial landlords whose tenants

enjoyed fixed (nominal) customary rents & dues: • i.e., copyholders at will or for ‘lives’: to be evicted • ii) with rising agricultural prices, customary tenants (but

also free-holders) captured the Ricardian economic rents: not the manorial lords

• iii) manorial lords’ objectives: evict or buy out these tenants and reorganize their lands into new fully enclosed individual farms

• iv) and lease them out to new tenants for higher rents, renewing leases at higher rents if prices continue to rise:


• -c) Enclosures: allowed manorial landlords to capture rising economic rents that had been gained by customary tenants

• i) To do so, landlords had to expropriate existing tenancies + to destroy communal agriculture: so far as was possible

• ii) Graph on English prices, from 1520s to 1650s,

• d) But does not explain enclosures for pasture & sheep-raising in the later 16th century


• (4) Why were so many English enclosures from the 1580s to 1620s more oriented to pastoral than arable farming?

• a) relative prices from 1550s to 1620s still favoured arable vs pastoral farming

• b) the first wave of enclosures, 1460 – 1550, had accompanied the boom in English cloth export trade

• c) cloth trade boom ended with the termination of Henry VIII’s Great Debasement in 1552: the revaluation wiped out earlier export gains from currency depreciation (higher priced £ sterling)


• d) Three decades later, the English cloth trade enjoyed a new export boom: lasting to outbreak of 30 years War in 1618 (later lecture on English trade)

• e) Explanation: relative costs: that transportation and marketing costs were still far lower for wool than for grains: in the Midlands regions without river transport

• f) Other factors promoting livestock agriculture: • i) The New Husbandry, or Convertible Agriculture: most

efficient form of combining livestock and arable increase productivity in pastoral as well as in arable (grain) agriculture

• ii) Urbanization: increased urban demand for meat + livestock products

‘Rise of the Gentry’ & Enclosures

• (1) Debate about Tawney’s ‘The Rise of the Gentry’ thesis • a) for related Marxian theories of Tudor-Stuart enclosures:

see online lecture notes (Cohen-Weitzman model) • - Marxists implicitly pose this question: why would

landlords engage in profit-maximizing enclosures, which are seemingly so foreign to a feudal culture and mentality?

• b) the question may be resolved by the Tawney thesis (not discussed in their model): which explores radical changes in ownership and control of manorial estates, from 1540 – 1640

• (2) Features of English upper-class structures and changes in land ownership: to be seen in the following table:

‘Rise of the Gentry’ & Enclosures (2)

• 3) Structure of Early-Modern English Upper Classes • a) the nobility or aristocracy: different from continental • - primogeniture: only the eldest son inherited the noble

title and the attached estates • - all other sons were legally commoners (thus ‘gentry’),

while in continental Europe all family members were noble • - English nobles or aristocrats did not rule territorial

districts, as on the continent: did not govern duchies, counties, etc.

• - instead: estates in form of hundreds of manors scattered across England (and also often: Wales, Scotland, Ireland)


• b) The Gentry: Gentlemen: a social class unique to England • i) chief components of the gentry: • - (1) younger sons & relatives of aristocrats • - (2) knights: in contrast to continental knights, who were part of

nobility • - note original House of Commons in mid 13th century: consisted of

knights of the shires and burgesses of towns • - (3) esquires or squires: lower rank of ‘almost-knights’ • - (4) baronets: new higher rank of knights, created by King James I

in 1611: as a heredity class, but still part of the Commons • - (5) ‘gentlemen’: lowest, broadest, most numerous level, generally

of bourgeois origins: merchants, lawyers, royal officials, professionals

‘Rise of the Gentry’ (4)

• b) The Gentry: Gentlemen: a social class unique to England

• ii) chief condition: that they acquired landed estates & wealth

• iiii) legally: all were commoners, despite being in the socio-economic upper classes as wealthy landowners


• Thomas Smith: De Republica Angolorum,

• ca. 1600: his definition of a gentleman (including university professors):

• ‘to be short: who can live idly and without manuall labour, and will bear the port, charge, and countenance of a gentlemen – he shall be taken for a gentleman’.


• (4) Changes in English Land-holdings, from the 1540s • a) Church and Crown: very sharp decline in their

landholdings most obvious feature of table: major losses from the 1540s: 35% to 10%

• - Most of their lands came to be held by the gentry, by the 1640s

• - but note from the table: the gentry had already ‘risen’, long before, with substantial holdings in 1436

• -b) the aristocracy: seem to have suffered only a slight decline (from 20% in 1436 to 18% in 1690):

• but these statistics are very deceptive

‘Rise of the Gentry’ & Enclosures 7

• - c) the gentry: holdings rose from 25% of total in 1436 to 45% in 1690: by the far the major gainers

• - d) The Yeomanry: experienced the other gains: from 20% in 1436 to 27% in 1690 (the height of their landholdings): an amorphous group: defined as:

• - freehold peasant farmers whose land was worth 40 shillings a year

• - who were entitled to sit on royal juries • - who were also entitled to vote for members of

the House of Commons


• (5) The Tawney Thesis on the ‘Rise of the Gentry’: • a) Henry VIII’s Reformation & Dissolution of the Monasteries:

1536 – 1540: • -royal confiscation of all ecclesiastical estates – from 15% - 20% of

all English & Welsh arable lands

• - (1) to consolidate his ‘Reformation’ – break from Rome (1533), by undermining economic power of the Catholic Church in England

• - (2) to reward his aristocratic allies: to buttress support for the Tudor monarchy: most were sold off to the titled peers

• - but did Henry sell lands below market rates? • -(3) also to raise money to fight his wars • - before engaging in the Great Debasement, 1542 -1552


• b) disposition of the confiscated lands:

• - by accession of Elizabeth in 1558: 75% of monastic lands had been sold

• - almost all by eve of the Civil War in 1642

• - By 1640, the gentry had acquired about 90% of the monastic lands: by purchasing them from the aristocracy and also the Crown


• (5) The Tawney Thesis on the ‘Rise of the Gentry’

• c) the Role of the Price Revolution: inflation, crown & aristocracy

• i) plight of the aristocracy: many nobles were impoverished by inflation, since their rents, dues, other fixed incomes did not rise with their cost of living:

• many had extravagant court & military costs

• ii) with estates in form of hundreds of scattered manors, most were unable to engage in enclosures and rational estate management to increase their incomes (‘capture economic rents’)


• iii) most also too preoccupied with court & military duties

• iv) for most, the simplest solution: live off their capital by selling lands, first and foremost recently acquired monastic lands, but then other lands as well

• v) The Crown: as the chief aristocrat: faced same plight and pursued the same course: selling off crown lands

‘Rise of the Gentry’ & Enclosures - 8

• (5) The Tawney Thesis on the ‘Rise of the Gentry’

• d) How the Gentry profited from the Price Revolution:

• i) those with bourgeois origins were not encumbered with a feudal mentality: more likely to have a market-oriented, profit-maximization outlook

• ii) not obligated by court, political, and military duties

• iii) better able to engage in estate management and enclosures:

• because most had far smaller estates with fewer manors (or single manors):


• e) Significance of the ‘Rise of the Gentry’ • i) Over the century 1540-1640, the gentry gained

enormous amounts of lands: • - almost doubled their landholdings at expense of

crown & aristocracy (principally from former Church lands): from 25% to 45% of total agricultural lands

- ii) transfer of valuable agricultural lands into the hands of those more socially/culturally predisposed to engage in profit-oriented commercial agriculture – with enclosures

- iii) Tawney’s concept of ‘agrarian capitalism’: as fundamental for English economic development

‘Rise of the Gentry’ & Enclosures -10

• f) faults of the Tawney thesis: • i) exaggerates ‘rise of the gentry’: already ‘risen’, with substantial

holdings, by 1436 [see the table] • ii) fails to make clear that the upper gentry were of same socio-

economic class as the aristocracy: younger sons & relatives • iii) fails to note that at least some aristocrats did engage in

enclosures & rational estate management (but in comparing the two groups, Tawney was probably on the mark)

• iv) fails to explain why the aristocracy apparently suffered only minor losses in aggregate holdings: by the 1690s

• v) obviously fails to explain any of the enclosures, from c. 1460 to 1540: many undertaken by gentry landlords

• vi) other criticism: misuse of statistical data (counting manors, etc)

‘Rise of the Gentry’ & Enclosures- 11

• (6) The Paradox of the 17th century English aristocracy • a) The table shows only a slight loss in overall

landholdings from 1436 to 1690: from 20% to 18% • b) but in 17th century (by 1690): number of peers

doubled so that average holdings fell in size • c) The post 1660 peerage was very different: • i) many who acquired noble peerages were of gentry

or even bourgeois origins: most maintained bourgeois outlooks & values

• ii) Charles II (1660-1685): post Civil-War ‘Restoration’ monarchy: created many new peers from the gentry

Fate of English Peasantry during Tudor-Stuart Enclosures 1

• (1) Peasant Freeholders and Yeomen

• a) peasant freeholders:

• - who held lands as virtual owners, with nominal fixed cash rents

• - full rights of inheritance

• -b) Yeomen: wealthier peasants:

• - i) holding lands worth 40s a year

• - ii) right to serve on royal juries and elect MPs.

• - iii) net land gainers during the Price Revolution: landholdings rose from 20% in 1436 to 27% in 1690

Fate of English Peasantry during Tudor-Stuart Enclosures - 2

• c) virtually all peasant freeholders gained from the Price Revolution:

• i) with low fixed nominal rents, were able to capture most of the Ricardian economic rents

• ii) most of the wealthier peasants engaged in enclosures

• iii) could be compared to Russian kulak peasants during pre-war Soviet era


• (2) Peasant Leaseholders: • - a) wide social range: from peasant freeholders, who

added lands by leases, to former serfs (copyholders) • - b) peasants who leased manorial demesne lands,

especially with the shift from Gutsherrschaft to Grundherrschaft from the 1380s (last term)

• - c) lease holders, with fixed rents: • - were able to capture some economic rents with

rising prices – but only during the period of their leases • - thus many paid higher rents on renewing their leases • d) many of also took part in Tudor-Stuart enclosures


• (3) Copyholders: by far most numerous class of peasant tenants in manorial England

• a) evolution from serfdom to copyholder status: see first-semester lectures

• b) cost of greater freedom: most lost one positive aspect of serfdom: guaranteed inheritance of their holdings bondage to soil

• c) tenure now based on written copyhold contracts:

• ‘tenure by copy of the court roll according to the custom of the manor’ – thus: ‘customary tenants’


• (4) Cottagers or Cottars: perhaps 30% of the peasantry in English Midlands

• a) part time agricultural labourers or industrial workers on manorial estates, with some land holdings

• - held a few strips in the Open Fields, with access rights to Commons for livestock

• - first & major victims: especially the enclosures of the village Commons

• b) easiest peasants to evict & dispossess with enclosures

• - many became an agricultural full-time wage-earning proletariat in enclosed farm estates

Potential Economic Gains from Tudor-Stuart Enclosures - 1

• (1) Gains from single private management: • -a) so that one person, whether landlord or

leaseholder, made all the required economic decisions: free from any communal constraints

• - b) examples of such gains: • -i) determine division of land between arable and

pasture • - ii) pastoral farming: • - to engage in selective breeding and more advanced

livestock care & management, with much improved feeding of livestock


• b) examples of such gains:

• -iii) arable farming: determine manner & form of crop rotations: what crops were best suited

• -iv) adopt Convertible Husbandry: far more advanced farming techniques [in next topic]

• - v) much better able to acquire and invest capital:


• (2) Economies of Scale: with much larger consolidated farming units (but also smaller than unmanageable manorial estates)

• a) labour economies: eliminating disguised unemployment on overcrowded lands increased labour productivity

• b) land efficiencies:

• converting underpopulated terrain, with poor arable potential, into pastoral lands: livestock


• c) better capital to land ratios: only practical with large amounts of land: with economies of scale in production & marketing

• - investments in land drainage or clearing, irrigation networks, livestock investment, improved ploughs & tools

• d) increasing returns from greater scale economies: in both production and marketing of agricultural outputs


• (3) Financial Aspects & Gains from Enclosures: • a) most enclosures required large capital investments:

to be seen with Convertible Husbandry, in particular • b) some capital derived from Ricardian rents • c) mortgages: chief way of raising capital: - i.e.

borrowing on the security (collateral) of the land • - note: this was virtually impossible to obtain, with

manorial communal agriculture, since the peasant’s Open Field lands could never be pledged as collateral for mortgages

• - some enclosures undertaken precisely in order to enable capital financing by mortgages


• (4) Did enclosed estates then experience productivity gains?

• a) Ultimately: by the early 18th century: • - seed:yield ratios rose from 4:1 in 14th to 11:1 in early 18th century • b) but New Husbandry not introduced until later 16th century, in

stages, with greatest diffusion only from the 1660s [next lecture] • c) Price Revolution: with steeply rising grain prices does not

indicate productivity gains, BUT • - any local or regional gains submerged with increased total

outputs, from higher cost, more distant lands, forced into production by population growth

• - shift from arable to pasture lands, for wool-growing and woollen cloth trade: may have reduced lands available for grain growing


• d) Enclosure offered only potentials for gains: from advanced forms of management and more advanced techniques, which landowners and leaseholders were often slow to adopt, just as enclosures were only slowly implemented

• e) Enclosures were far from being complete on eve of the Industrial Revolution:

• at most, about 70% enclosed, reflecting entrenched property rights of many tenants:

• tenant rights eliminated, from 1760s, by Parliamentary expropriations (Enclosure Acts).

IX. AGARIAN CHANGES IN EARLY MODERN EUROPE, …€¦ · · 2012-02-02AGARIAN CHANGES IN EARLY MODERN EUROPE, ... Features of English upper-class structures and changes ... •a)

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